Today, there a variety of mobile devices that are designed to have expandable architectures. For example, there are personal digital assistants, pocket PCs, laptop computers, and the like. Increasingly, these devices are including peripheral device ports or serial connections for adding hardware to the mobile device, expanding the mobile device's capabilities.
Additional hardware typically includes modems, network cards, additional memory, program cards, and the like. The additional functionality provided by these additional hardware options are similar to the additional functionality traditionally only offered by PC cards for computers. Plug-and-Play capabilities of mobile device have increased the interchangeability of these additional hardware options. With Plug-and-Play technology, hardware can be connected to a mobile device and used, often without resetting the system.